Basile Mookherjee: Fully Fueled - (Paperback)

About the Book

Where once there was desert, cities sprawl for miles; sixteen-lane highways dictate urban rhythm and daily commutes, often taking hours. Abu Dhabi and Dubais car culture and high-consumption environment is the subject of Fully Fueled, French social documentary photographer Basile Mookherjees newest look into a culture rarely explored. In 2012 and 2014, Mookherjee captured young Emiratis nights out on the town. The traditionally garbed young men and women have created an entire subculture in and around their cars and against a Vegas-like urban backdrop. The oversized floppy catalog mimicking the glossy pages of high-end fashion magazines portrays a strange world of over-the-top consumption. Reflecting on the UAEs abrupt petrodollar-driven modernization of essentially nomadic Middle Eastern culture, Mookherjee limns a world somewhere between desert dust and Gotham City, Islam and spending power, tradition and modernity. In addition to his career in fashion photography, Mookherjee explores the cultural contradictions inherent in our fast-changing world.

Book Synopsis

Fully Fueled brings together pictures taken from 2012 to 2014 by the young French photographer Basile Mookherjee, who documented young Emiratis' nights out and the United Arab Emirates' 42nd national holiday on the streets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Flat, sprawled-out urban deserts, phallic urban geometries, reflecting surfaces and lavish ornamentation form the decor. The secret stars of these photographs are of course the cars, and the view seldom rises above windshield level. The human subjects, traditionally dressed in dishdasha (for men) and abaya (for women), seem as though photographed "through the lens of the car," as the photographer puts it. Fully Fueled is an over-the-top liturgy composed of the shapes and surfaces of our globalized environment. The book also reflects on the UAE's abrupt petrodollar-driven modernization and the aesthetic expression thereof in cities that have sprung up amid an essentially nomadic Middle Eastern culture. A world somewhere between desert dust and Gotham City, Islam and spending power, tradition and modernity.